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I have been quite vocal about how social media fails a lot of the time because it can be far too focused on campaigns rather than building a deep relationship with the customer through an exceptional experience. I’ve allowed myself to stray in this post as we begin to capture great case studies that demonstrate how social media can help not only gain followers, but actually sell ‘down time,’ ‘off peak,’ or ‘late deals.’

The hotel, transport and entertainment industries are a case in point. It’s extraordinarily rare the number of hotels, trains, planes and leisure attractions that are still reticent and demure at undertaking social media. It’s supposedly what they are great at; ‘being social.’

There are solid illustrations. The Joie de Vivre now has almost 11,000 followers on Twitter and over 8,300 Facebook fans. It uses these social media objects to push special offers and vouchers in off peak times, for example a Twitter promotional code for $79 a room at the San Francisco Galleria Park Hotel. Since the program started late in 2009, the Joie de Vivre has booked over 2000 room nights through these deals using social media.

The airline and the train industry should take note. Indian airlines are well ahead of the rest of the world and in comparison to the UK’s domestic carriers even further ahead. Jet Airways is one of the most prolific domestic airlines engaged in social media, followed by other airlines like Spice Jet, Kingfisher, Air India, Indigo and Go Air. They are predominately using the platforms Twitter, Facebook and Flickr to channel messages and engagement. While the Twitter profile is used to make announcements and have conversations with the clients, the Flickr profile is used to give customers an insight into what the brand is all about.

The results of the conversations Jet Airways www.jetairways.com are stimulating are, even for the most cynical, interesting. The airline received over 4000 conversations on various networking sites, in a time span of 2 weeks. Twitter demographics showed that both Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways are used by the people of same age group. To attract more customers, these brands are differentiating their services using unique packaging and convenience by reaching out to target consumers, instead of serving the masses. The semantic web will make this all the more alluring.

KLM www.klm.com have tried a different approach. They identified who had mentioned them via twitter and foursquare whilst waiting for their flight at the airport. This is where the benefit of hashtags can be seen. From here they researched some technographic information such as the content in the tweet, what information described the type of person and buying behaviours. Then they purchased a small, appropriate gift and delivered it to them, a random act of kindness evoking positive emotions, rewarding engagement with a social media channel and creating a bond with the brand that could go viral. The results show 1,000,000 impressions on twitter alone. An exceptional and personal brand experience for those travelers and the people that viewed the campaign on Twitter. Great example of how to appease late arrivals and delays in take off!

But you could get so much more imaginative and its works equally across the hotel and entertainment sectors.

A word of caution though! First you have to build the followers, fans and ‘likes’ before you can turn them into a community. It helps if you are a personality led brand, easy for the smaller hotels. There was a recent case of a business tweeting its latest deals then saying social media doesn’t work. Number of followers 10! I won’t insult you by saying anymore. The airline statistics are below:

* As of 29.05.11

We all know it’s not about the number of followers but the quality of the follower. However, you have to have some critical mass before you can engage and facilitate eventual participation. There are huge opportunities in selling spare seats on trains and planes. Filling rooms and restaurants in hotels and increasing sales at leisure attractions on off peak days. As the growth of smart mobile ownership swells this year, its makes it not only easier to show results but also imperative to explore social media as an eye catching route to market that guests are going to smile about.

Decision makers in the above mentioned sectors only need ask themselves two questions; if we could increase ‘down time’ bookings by 10%, how does that financially impact on the business and, how will it increase our brand profile?

All right we’ve talked about the amoeba like qualities of a business community and why we have to evolve from having a static, transactional based database to a space where people who love what you do interact with each other. Sometimes you’ll organise this, occasionally the community will organise themselves. BMW doesn’t organised the Mini Club rally’s that take place on sunny Summer afternoons!

What’s critical in this process and what binds your business community is its connections. The connections between your employees, their customers, suppliers, their customers customers, competitors and you! You’ll map this connection visually once a year (we’re working on a model at the moment.) This will show connection lines, participation lines, influencing lines, prospecting lines and information channels.

Once you’ve mapped it, you can start to influence it yourself. This is where the new marketing tactics complement direct mail, telesales and advertising. This is not about stakeholders, like an overladen plane, that really never took off. This is about the regular convening of groups of people, facilitated by you across cross-sections of your business community with common interests. We’ll call them hot groups an evolvement of Jean Lipman- Bluemen and Harold J Leavitt’s idea! Where WOM and viral really can take hold.

It will eventually develop into an eco-system that thrives on information and knowledge flow. It will mean your organisation unlearning and letting go of lots of stuff:

Control to facilitation
Marketing to business communities
Closed to open
Broadcast to social
Restriction to freedom
Management to leadership

I’ve seen this working with a few clients and organisations and its fascinating, powerful, enlightening and inspiring watching companies engage with their ‘database’ sorry ‘business community’ in a very, very different and dynamic way!